hell intersects at carondelet and bourbon sweatsheened street speakers lambast lucifers gates where grimy undercover angels lean to sleep and slumberpray the word of god sweeps through the concrete beat only humidity speaks while the spirit sings praise praise praise

Where once we had school
-a tall building, the gathering of books, thoughts-
Now a hollowing out. The stale wind blows through barbed
wire, remnants of horror, intended to remain
To remember
This hollowed out place
A school becomes a building
A building becomes chambers
Chambers become cells -
all paths lead to the Hill of Poisonous Trees,
where many red rings hang; symbols to replace horror
with Remembrance.
A school becomes a building
A memory becomes a memorial;
But the trees grow despite the poisoned hills.
One day I hope they outgrow this place;
and yet I want Strychnine Hill to stay -
If it is the only way to remember,
To memorialize the school that was raized.

Nola I came crawling
fingernails scratching at your broken concrete
blast-ridden ears numb to
Music at your center -
Now I lay myself down in your canals
Along your muddy parks
naked; indiscreet
I swirl in trumpet music
Eddy down echo streets
With funeral processions -
celebrations of Lives worth living
Again and again.
I would fold myself neatly
In lines like paper airplanes
to cut through your wet air
like a deft tongue parting lips
gasp and gasp again,
I want to deep dive in cerulean.

The world shows you bouquets while law screams of consequence
So loud that you begin to wonder
At the random order of floral arrangements -
Red masked hyacinths
Fox-gloved armaments
Honeybee sentinels guarding the last living queen
Who will she be
Are hornets defter than bees at murdering interlopers -
The last of these I've seen
Tiptoe at the grave of endangered species.

The ghost
Empty girl
A spectator of greater events ( our narrator. Protagonist)

What it is to die inside but to keep breathing. It's like watching life but only catching the  end of all things; the greatest romances but with every suitor you become so aware of the approaching end. You watch for it, bite your nails over it, rip your cuticles to shred the golden air you breathed only days ago, filling it with noxious silence and this oppressive somnalence;
And hell
to return to You, the real you, feels like clawing your way out of a well
You can't recognize your hands
These pinched phalanges are cracked with age lines but you are so **** young

Your hands are the hands of another.

Cold is the shoulder wrapped in narcissistic delight -
The wanton
The diligent
The emptiness abides
But for iceburgs calving in the asiatic sea
Do they feel the tremor of the broken shard released
Can the blueblack glass reveal the depths of the mislaid man or
The woman -
Never given the chance to Be
It is too much to consider broken pieces should be saved,
Hidden for much later, when the sea will freeze again
Can he open to the touch
Can she build from what remains
We throw out the scattered remnants like the iceburg melting into sand
But consider the sand:
Remnants too, of shells and coral of bones and buildings fallen, broken, discarded
yet
Washing up on land
to build a new shore.